


First Impressions, Second Chances

by CopperCaravan



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: F/M, Fenera Mahariel, First Impressions, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-01
Updated: 2016-08-01
Packaged: 2018-07-28 18:00:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7650958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CopperCaravan/pseuds/CopperCaravan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zevran meets the Warden. He's found himself in a bit of a compromising position and she doesn't really seem like the forgiving type. Maybe he doesn't want her to be either.</p>
            </blockquote>





	First Impressions, Second Chances

**Author's Note:**

> For zev/warden week, day one: "the warden dies here." Except obviously she doesn't.

Most people, had they any sense, would be concerned with things like _why am I still alive_ and _how can I keep it that way,_ and while Zevran is quite surprised to find himself in this position ( _alive, alive, alive_ ), mostly he is surprised that the ‘fierce Warden,’ the mark who should’ve been his death, is another elf. A short elf.

She is very short.

Even by their standards, he imagines she is more tangled hair than height. Still, the look on her face sends a shiver along his spine and it is—strangely—more fear than interest. Yes, this is a very strange position he’s found himself in.

And, really, he ought to capitalize on it. Perhaps she will kill him—it would make no difference at this point, and was that not what he’d been a little hopeful of? But perhaps she will not and then... Well, he will simply have to see.

And even tied up, heaped in the damp grass, he _is_ alive. She’s kept him alive on purpose.

Her expression shifts little as he speaks, though she seems keen to play along—for now, at least. His last hope—information, trade, labour—dwindles on his tongue when she drops to the ground and leans toward him, face so close he could count every line of her tattoos ( _vallaslin,_ his mind supplies; he wonders if his mother had them, what they looked like) but he realizes he certainly won’t have the time for that when she presses her knife against his throat.

“I don’t trust you,” she says. He gets a glimpse of her teeth on the tip of _trust_ and the fear subsides to not quite begrudged respect—as an adversary, if nothing else. She’s making quick work of him already.

“Wise,” he concedes. He’s not sure if he’s helping his case or not; it would help to know where she stood on the issue of cutting his throat but considering the press of steel—not steel, no, something else; he is familiar with knives, after all—he has a fair enough idea of her thoughts.

She reaches toward his face with her free hand, almost gently, and he pulls back, uncertain. “Your tattoos,” she says, voice much softer than before, though not enough to lessen the pressure of her knife, not enough to be a comfort—he reminds himself that he did not come here looking for comfort.

 _Ah._ The memories—stories told to him of his mother; her gloves, warm and worn against his cheek at night; the clan in Antiva that—better not to dwell. If these are his last moments, he would like to spend them thinking of something—someone—else. The trouble is that so few of even his happiest memories are not tainted with some darkness now. “Not at all the same as yours,” he says, “unfortunately.”

This gives her pause, and he wonders what she is thinking, to shut her eyes so close to the enemy, even for a second—there is certainly _something_ there. Perhaps she has happy memories of her own, tainted with a similar darkness. He hopes not, and then he thinks it is a strange thing to hope, for the sake of the woman who may yet kill him.

When she opens her eyes, something changes. She does not relax, she does not smile, she does not even take her knife from his throat at first. The world is exactly the same as it was a moment before and yet.

He is going to live.

“I can kill you,” she says, leaning over him to cut the ropes on his wrists. “In case that wasn’t clear.”

“Clear as water, my dear.” He sits up, a little awkwardly while she works at the ropes around his ankles, and rubs the circulation back into his hands. Her companions, clearly, are not pleased.

She stands up, offers her hand. “I am not your _dear_.”

He dips his head— _understood_ —and takes her hand. Her skin is rough, calloused from bows and hilts and work. Mostly, he is curious—is she merciful? Simply pragmatic? A liar?

He is going to live and the thought is not near so depressing as it had been. At least he has a question to occupy his thoughts. At least he has a reason to go through the motions a while longer.

“Who are you then, Warden?”

“Mahariel.” She turns away—bares her back to him, begs him to test her; oh, he likes her already—and starts them all marching forward to wherever they were headed before his, ah, interruption. “My name is Mahariel.”

As an assassin, _fate_ is a bit of a laughable concept to him. But all things considered, it is strange that even now he hasn’t met his. Unless he has.


End file.
